The Teletubbies Go To 'Nam

Somewhere above the treeline, and possibly outside the legal bounds of my travel insurance coverage (depending on who's reading this), we found ourselves trudging through a landscape that can only be described as Teletubbycore. It had all the key features: rolling green hills, eerie stillness, and the demonic grin of a baby glaring down at us from the sky (or is that just me developing schizophrenia?)

For this day, we took an alternative trail, if you could call it that, which had clearly been designed by a sadist or at the very least been abandoned since the late sixties. Overgrown foliage clawed at my ankles like a pack of gingerandbankrupt fans desperate for a selfie (happens every time I leave the house without a disguise.)

Steep, overgrown, and narrow, it felt like we were hacking our way through the jungles of Vietnam. We bushwhacked through undergrowth so thick that we couldn't even see our own feet, let alone the horrendous uneven ground of the Lagem pass.

Horseflies rained down on us like a hellfire of napalm, targeting our skin with military precision, even piercing through our clothing to be able to nibble away at us,. Every few seconds, one of us would break out into a frantic slapping fit, like that one episode of the Teletubbies where they all turn on Dipsy for being a little bitch (*possibly made-up.)

At one point, Thomas disappeared through a bush like he'd triggered a Vietcong trap, before emerging with giant buboes blooming on his arm and knee from mystery stings. Whether purple from bites, bruises or breathlessness, he had now fully morphed into Tinky Winky (...or Tomky Womky!?), and myself into Laa Laa (uh... Jaa Jaa!?), battered and cbeebies versions of our former selves.

Each running on 3 mini cheddars and 5 Fanta flavoured mentos, we launched a final offensive up to 3,142 m for the most glorious vantage over the Caucasus yet. We could almost reach out and touch the crusted glaciers which lagged beneath us, while Mount Elbrus loomed in the distance, blank and boxy, like a Soviet fridge.

The descent that followed was an aggressive downhill, ideal if you'd like your knees to buckle and soles to scream. Thomas nearly became a statistic, taking his very own fall of Saigon after misplacing a foot on the near vertical ground and tumbling for what felt like an eternity before landing miraculously, unscathed at the top of a gully. It was around here, one teletumble away from needing rescue from a chopper, that we asked ourselves 'is this actually fun, or are we just trauma-bonded with mountains?'

After a few hours of mental clock out, we finally descended into the four scattered stone hamlets of Ushguli, both in victory and defeat. But before we could fully take in the crumbling towers, we were being beckoned over by our American friends from Zhabeshi. Two of them, it turned out, had been bitten by dogs after doing handstands next to them (?!) and were now understandably keen to get to the hospital for rabies shots (maybe it was telerabies). And so, after being bundled into the back of a van, we looked back, triumphant, slightly sunburnt and mildly rabid on Georgian Svaneti, celebrating our survival the only way we knew how: with pina coladas and pizza in Mestia (finally real food again😩)Lue lisää